OrthodoxNet.com Blog

Touchestone | Russell D. Moore | July/August 2008

For months, Barack Obama’s pastor lit up the radio and television airwaves with his comments on conspiracy theories about American “state-sponsored terrorism,” his call on God to damn America, his belief that the September 11 terrorist attacks were simply America’s “chickens coming home to roost.”

Some of the talking heads discussed Jeremiah Wright as though his kind of rhetoric were essential to the African-American church, a claim that is patently untrue, and easily verifiable as such. Others seemed to assume that his style of ministry was unique. The truth is, Jeremiah Wright’s name is Legion, and you are just as likely to hear his kind of preaching in a white congregation as in a black one. Continue Reading »

Human Events | Terry Easton | Jul 4, 2008

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline.

The Democrats’ base — wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people — won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated.

The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to take public transit. Continue Reading »

Human Events | Michael Reagan | Jul 4, 2008

Americans are worried. Americans are angry. Soaring gas prices are seriously crippling our economy and hitting us where it hurts the most — in our pockets.

We have a right to be angry, but anger is no longer enough. It’s time for rage — good, old American rage aimed at those elitist Democrats who prefer to see the folks beggared by soaring fuel prices rather than take the action this very real economic crisis demands. Drill. Continue Reading »

WorldNetDaily | Jun 30, 2008

Homosexual-rights advocates have asked California’s Supreme Court to block citizens from voting this fall on a measure voters originally brought to the ballot: Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act.

Proposition 8, so labeled when Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified it earlier this month for placement on the Nov. 4 ballot, is a constitutional amendment that states, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The amendment was created by voter initiative with the signatures of 1.1 million voters, more than the required 694,354 needed to place an issue on the ballot. Continue Reading »

World Net Daily | June 30, 2008

Ruling lifts Planned Parenthood injunction against state’s abortion statute

A federal court ruled against Planned Parenthood and rejected an injunction against a state law requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they may face serious medical conditions and will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued a 7-4 ruling Friday to lift an injunction against the South Dakota informed consent abortion law. Attorneys representing the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Family Research Council in defense of the law.

“A woman’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence in a statement. “Anyone truly concerned about the interests of women supports making sure they have access to all the information necessary to make a fully informed decision. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, has argued adamantly to restrict the information women have about the lives of their pre-born babies. We’re pleased the court’s decision today will make sure women have access to the information they need and deserve.”

Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Jamie Glazov | Jun 29, 2008

American Thinker’s guest today is David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow in the Discovery Institute’s program in Religion, Liberty, and Public Life and a former senior editor of National Review. He is the author of The Lord Will Gather Me In, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, and Shattered Tablets. His new book is, How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative. Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Christopher Chantrill | Jun 30, 2008

Every now and again our learned scholars in the liberal university come up with a study, financed by taxpayers’ money, that concludes what every liberal already knows. Conservatives are rigid and not very intelligent. In fact, as one study by two Berkeley professors claimed, the the “whiny, insecure kid in nursery school” probably grew up to be a conservative.

Of course two can play at that game, and so conservative Peter Schweizer took a look at the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey and a few other generally available opinion surveys and came to the opposite conclusion in his book Makers and Takers. He found that conservatives are the good guys and liberals are the whiners. Continue Reading »

Townhall.com | Ken Connor | Jun 29, 2008

Planned Parenthood is in search of a makeover. For years, the organization has been the biggest abortionist in the business, but as abortion is losing its cachet, Planned Parenthood is trying to reinvent itself. It seems that killing children for cash is just not as fashionable as it used to be. Continue Reading »

NRO | Editors | Jun 26, 2008

In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court’s modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its “independent judgment” of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court’s death-penalty decisions have become entirely unmoored from the actual Eighth Amendment — as well as from the good sense of the American people — Kennedy’s opinion provides it. Continue Reading »

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | Jun 27, 2008

Pakistani-born Bishop Michael Nazir Ali of the Church of England continues to roil his leftist and Islamist critics by recently defending the right of Christians to share the Gospel with Muslims.

“Just as Muslims have the right to exercise Da’wa - an invitation to Islam - so Christians must have the freedom to invite people to follow Jesus Christ,” explained the bishop at a press conference in Jerusalem on June 24. “Dialogue proceeds on the understanding that each is a missionary faith.” Continue Reading »

Investor’s Business Daily | Jun 27, 2008

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to restore the “Fairness Doctrine” regulating political speech — proof that in the Internet Age, Democrats have lost the communications war.

Forty years ago, Walter Cronkite could declare on the evening news that the Vietnam War was lost, and that’s the way it was. Do Americans want to return to those days by reviving the so-called Fairness Doctrine? Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Lee Cary | Jun 26, 2008

In his confrontation with James Dobson, Senator Obama faces a degree of absolutism that pales in belligerent intensity compared to what he could, as President, face from America’s most hostile adversaries. His response to Dobson is a clue to how he might deal with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, et al.

It’s no secret that the Obama Campaign is executing a plan to woo evangelical voters coordinated by Joshua DuBois, the National Director of Religious Affairs. DuBois, a member of a United Pentecostal Council Assemblies of God church in Cambridge, Mass., was a graduate student at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School when he was “enthralled” by Obama’s reference to faith issues in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. He volunteered to help Obama get elected president. Continue Reading »

Human Events | Ted Nugent | Jun. 26, 2008

As I swab down one of my hundreds of privately owned, individually possessed firearms again this fine morning, I snicker and shake my head in disbelief that there are four “justices” on the “supreme” court that do not believe Americans have individual rights. Sure, I am somewhat pleased that we now have a SCOTUS confirmation of the self-evident truth and God given individual right to keep and bear arms, but the 5-4 ruling is another painful example, like Guantanamo and the decree against the death penalty for child rapist decisions that indicate a divisive culture war raging on, and four supreme justices frighteningly disconnected from the heart and soul of America. Continue Reading »

Human Events | Ann Coulter | Jun. 25, 2008

Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished! Continue Reading »

Wall Street Opinion Journal | William McGurn | June 26, 2008

[...]
Mr. Obama is for using tax dollars to fund abortions, and against restrictions on partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, he voted against legislation protecting a child who was born alive despite an abortion. In sum, if you want to know what Mr. Obama’s policies mean, it’s this: taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.

Not fair, complains the Obama camp. They point to statements supporting adoption. They cite the story about how he removed language about “right-wing ideologues” from one of his Web sites after a pro-life doctor complained. Above all, they say he has acknowledged a moral dimension to abortion, that he’s willing to listen, and that he wants to work for fewer abortions. Continue Reading »

ChrisBanescu.com | Chris Banescu | Jun. 21, 2008

In this article I’m continuing with my review of the key characteristics of great leaders. Here are some additional qualities that embody superior leadership.

Great leaders surround themselves with greatness. They actively seek out the best possible people and hire them to fill all key positions within their organizations. Great leaders know that surrounding themselves with excellence is a direct reflection on their own character, abilities, and effectiveness as leaders. They understand that their own success and the success of their organizations depend mostly on hiring and promoting the best qualified, ethical, skilled, responsible, mature, and productive people and giving them the proper resources, authority, and freedom to do what’s needed for the long-term benefit of their companies. Great leaders do not feel threatened by anyone lower in the chain of command who’s smarter, better educated, more productive, or more popular than they are. They respect the greatness and unique abilities of the individuals they lead and encourage them to continually flourish and grow. Continue Reading »

Christian Examiner online | Chuck Colson | June 2008

Do you want to talk about traditional values on a college campus? Or do you want to speak out against same-sex “marriage”? You may have to enter the Whisper Zone. David Woodard is a political science professor at Clemson University—one who has first-hand experience on how dangerous it can be to speak out in favor of traditional values: He almost lost his job over it. Continue Reading »

A Short Course in Brain Surgery highlights the plight of an Ontario man with a cancerous brain tumor who crossed the border to the U.S. to get the medical care that is rationed in his home country.
Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Geoffrey P. Hunt | Jun 23, 2008

According to the popular press, carbon has now joined toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium on Peck’s Bad Boy list. The phrase “carbon footprint” in the lexicon of lazy pseudo science writers and amateur climatologists provokes images of radioactive dirty shoes betraying our every move leaving deadly indelible impressions on the path to oblivion.

Why has the image of carbon been so distorted and demonized? Most of us even having a glancing familiarity with organic chemistry at one time knew that carbon is the building block of life on earth. From simple sugars to amino acids and DNA from industrial polymers to Q-tips, carbon is everywhere on earth, as it necessarily must be as carbon’s structure invites nearly every other element to bond with it. Continue Reading »

Salvo Magazine | Karen Swallow Prior | Spring, 2008

In 2005, according to an annual survey of college freshmen by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, “only” 54.5 percent of first-year students agreed that “abortion should be legal.” What this tells us is that when college kids first arrive on campus, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with idealism, they exhibit a relative enthusiasm for life—that is, until the leftists and secularists who overwhelm academia dig their claws into them. Once this happens, research indicates that even the sizable minority who go so far as to actually count themselves pro-life is doomed to diminish. (And this surely can’t be the result of learning per se, since virtually all of history’s great thinkers—from Hippocrates to Maimonides to Mary Wollstonecraft—have opposed elective abortion.) Continue Reading »